I've spent most of my career building software, but recently started getting into hardware — first with Arduinos and ESP32s, and then designing PCBs. With the amount of information available now, the barrier to entry feels much lower than I expected.
One component that fascinated me immediately was addressable RGB LEDs like the WS2812. Being able to control physical light with a single data line feels surprisingly powerful.
NeoRing came out of that exploration. I wanted something more compact and integration-friendly than the LED rings I had used before, and I was also interested in experimenting with a dual-ring layout to allow more interesting visual effects within a small footprint.
I wrote a small library with prebuilt effects to make it easy to get started, but it can also be controlled directly using standard WS2812 libraries.
Here's a short video showing it: https://youtu.be/htdJqxQdXWA
I designed the PCB and assembled the first batch recently. Happy to answer questions about the design, signal integrity, manufacturing, or anything else.